In cellular radio communications, admission and congestion control, as well as resource control and allocation, for each cell are used to maintain acceptable quality of service for existing mobile user connections in those cells. And because radio resources are limited, they must be managed efficiently to maximize system capacity. For ease of description, load control, admission control, congestion control, and resource control and reallocation are generally referred to as resource management.
Admitting too many new connections may result in increased interference between the mobile user connections thereby degrading the quality of service. Transmitting at too high of a power level or bit rate in either the downlink or the uplink direction creates unnecessary interference which adversely impacts service quality and throughput. For downlink resource management, it is possible to estimate a worst case situation at every position in the service area by assuming that each base station is operating at maximum power. Such a situation may occur in cells that use high speed downlink shared channel transmission.
In the uplink direction from mobile to base station, the interference includes both background noise as well as total received power from the transmitting mobiles. The more mobile users transmitting, the more interference, and the higher the uplink load is in that base station's cell. Interference at the base station is caused both by transmitting mobiles located in that base station cell as well as transmitting mobiles located in other cells, particularly nearby cells. Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine for one cell the impact that an uplink mobile transmission will have in the one cell, particularly if that mobile is not served by the base station in that cell, and instead, is served by another nearby base station. Nevertheless, that mobile's uplink transmission will still have an adverse impact in the one cell.
Determining the impact that the mobile's transmission will have on another cell is particularly problematic in decentralized or distributed resource management schemes. Distributed resource control is desirable because it is implemented much “closer” to where the resources are actually used. Centralized control schemes also require substantial signaling overhead and impose delays associated with sending information to the central control entity, e.g., a base station controller, a radio network controller, or even a core network node. Significant delay and signaling are associated with the central control entity sending commands and information to the base stations and mobile stations. As high speed downlink and uplink transmission formats become more common, resource management will likely become more decentralized or distributed in order to achieve higher speeds and avoid the considerable signaling (and associated costs) required for centralized control.
Centralized resource management receives information from various cells which allows informing base stations about mobile connections, conditions, etc., in adjacent cells. By its very nature, a distributed resource manager in a base station does not have information about other mobile connections it is not supervising/serving. On the other hand, uplink transmissions from such unserved mobiles can have a dramatic impact the interference in the cell load. For example, a high power or high data rate uplink transmission from a mobile station that is being managed by a first base station in a first cell may create significant interference in a nearby second cell managed by a second base station. That interference increases the load in the second cell and effectively consumes resources in the second cell that the second base station would rather use to service mobiles within the second cell. The second base station has no way of knowing or estimating the impact that other mobile uplink transmissions will have on its resources or how it will impact current communications being supported in the second cell. The first base station does not know, nor can it reasonably estimate, the contribution its served mobiles' transmissions make to the interference at the second base station.
It would be desirable to implement a distributed resource management scheme but at the same time at least reduce the adverse impact of uplink transmissions on adjacent cells. The inventors recognized that these goals could be well achieved using relative path gain related measurements made (directly or indirectly) by the mobiles to improve uplink resource management in a distributed resource control cellular system. For purposes here, a distributed resource control system is one in which the base station alone or in combination with a mobile station makes at least some resource management decisions without having to involve a central controller like a BSC, RNC, core network node, etc. This is also the situation in ad-hoc networking, where access points manage the resources in a distributed fashion. But the relative path gain related measurements can also be valuable for centralized uplink resource control with limited control signaling, where only the most informative measurements should be signaled to the resource control node.
Also, for purposes of this description, path gain encompasses attenuation (attenuation is expressed as a negative number and path gain a positive number in logarithmic scale—attenuation is less than one and path gain greater than one in linear scale) and any other term describing a similar effect on a radio signal. In most of the following text, the path gain related quantity will be represented by path gain itself for clarity. Any other path gain related quantity could also be used. Advantageously, mobiles in many commercial cellular systems already determine path gain values (or values from which path gain can be calculated) relating to pilot signals received from nearby base stations, e.g. for handover purposes. Assuming a logarithmic scale, path gain is typically determined based on a difference between a detected base station pilot signal strength detected at the mobile radio and a pilot signal strength at which the base station transmitted the pilot signal.
The inventive technology may advantageously be used in a cellular radio communication system using distributed resource control that includes a serving cell and a non-serving cell. A mobile radio is currently served by a serving base station in the serving cell. A serving cell corresponds to the cell having the highest path gain to the mobile radio and is very often the cell in which the mobile radio is currently located. A relative path gain is determined for an uplink signal transmission from the mobile radio. The relative path gain is based on a comparison of a first path gain for an uplink signal transmission from the mobile radio to the non-serving base station with a second path gain for the uplink signal transmission from the mobile to the serving base station. Relative path gain can be expressed as a ratio of the second path gain to the first path gain if the path gains are in linear units or as a difference between the second path gain and the first path gain if the path gains are in logarithmic units. Preferably, the relative path gain is an average relative path gain.
Uplink resources in the first cell are managed based on the relative path gain. For example, a transmission power or a data rate used by the mobile radio for the uplink signal transmission may be adjusted. Such adjusting may be based on a previously-determined value provided by the serving base station. One example might be a maximum relative path gain, a maximum signal-to-interference ratio, a maximum data rate, a maximum transmission power, etc.
In one non-limiting example implementation of distributed uplink resource control, the mobile radio determines the relative path gain for uplink signal transmissions from the mobile radio. The mobile radio also manages uplink resources by adjusting a transmission power used by the mobile radio or by adjusting a data rate used by the mobile radio for the uplink signal transmission. More specifically, the mobile radio compares the relative path gain to a predetermined value provided by the serving base station, and if the relative path gain exceeds the predetermined value, the mobile radio adjusts the resources used for the uplink signal transmission.
In another non-limiting example implementation of distributed uplink resource control, the serving base station determines the relative path gain for uplink signal transmissions from the mobile radio, and based on that relative path gain, manages uplink resources. For example, the serving base station compares the relative path gain to a predetermined value. If the relative path gain exceeds the predetermined value, the serving base station instructs the mobile radio to decrease the resources used for the uplink signal transmission.
Various relative path gain measurement reporting methods may be used. For example, the mobile radio may send a relative path gain measurement to the serving base station when the relative path gain measurement exceeds a predetermined value either absolutely or using a hysteresis. Periodic reporting may also be used.
Another application manages uplink resources using a mobile classification based on relative path gain. When a path gain measurement exceeds a predetermined value for one of the mobile radios, that one mobile radio is classified as harmful. Otherwise, the one mobile radio is classified as harmless. Fewer resources are allocated to a harmful mobile radio than to a harmless radio.
Of course, the technology may be applied to situations that involve more than two cells. For example, the cellular radio communication system includes multiple non-serving cells. The relative path gain is then determined based on a comparison of a maximum path gain for an uplink signal transmission from the mobile radio to any of the non-serving base stations with the path gain for the uplink signal transmission from the mobile to the serving base station.
A relative path gain measurement also may include (a) the relation (relation means ratio in linear scale and difference in logarithmic scale) between the received pilot signal power from a non-serving cell and the received pilot signal power from the serving cell or (b) the relation between the received pilot signal power from a non-serving cell relative the interference power and the received pilot signal power from the serving cell relative the interference power. Consequently, in a 3GPP non-limiting example application, relative measurements may be reported for one of the three quantities that may be specified by path gain: common pilot received signal code power, common pilot received signal power, and relative interference power.